European Florists Championship Europa Cup 2011

Catalogue number	0689
Date of issue	15.6.2011
Face value	25 CZK
Print sheets	á 50 pcs of stamps
Size of picture	23 x 40 mm
Graphic designer	Vlasta Matoušová
Engraver Printing method	Miloš Ondráček multicoloured offset

Like the Olympic games, the top prestigious EUROPA CUP competition in floral design takes place once every four years in one of the member countries of FLORINT, the European Federation of Professional Florist Associations. The federation was formed in Strasbourg in 1956 under the name Fédération Européenne des Unions Professioneless des Fleuristes (FEUPF) and changed its name to Florint in January 2009.
The first of these professional florist competitions was held in 1967. The EUROPA CUP 2011 will be held on August 31st - September 5th, 2011 and it will be the first time the competition will be held in the Czech Republic. The City of Havířov and the Czech Union of Flower Growers and Florists will be the organizers. 
The competitors will come from 24 European countries. The six disciplines will take them through the history of the organizing city and the history of Czech music. A couple of the competition themes will reflect Havířov's early history and its relationship with coal and flowers. The next theme will be the 170th anniversary of Antonín Dvořák's birth. The final theme will focus on fashion and surprise. 
Jaromír Kokeš, 2010 Czech Master Florist, will represent the Czech Republic.

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Young Animals - Cricetus Cricetus

Catalogue number	0688
Date of issue	15.6.2011
Face value	10 CZK
Print sheets	á 50 pcs of stamps
Size of picture	23 x 40 mm
Graphic designer	Libuše a Jaromír Knotkovi
Engraver Printing method	Martin Srb multicoloured offset

The European hamster (Cricetus Cricetus) is a species of hamsters relative to voles. Some authors classify hamsters, voles and mice as a single family.
The European hamster is a medium-sized, stout-bodied animal with short legs. The tail is short and furred. It is often taken for a marmot, but unlike a marmot, the European hamster is more colourful, with yellow to orange brown dorsal fur with black ends, and a dark brown to black chest and belly. The top head fur is reddish, with white or yellow patches behind the ears and on the nose (and on the front legs). The animal changes its rather thick coat colour once a year. Other prominent features include very large cheek poaches, and flank glands of males that are much larger during the breeding season. 
The European hamster is a nocturnal species. It is an excellent runner and jumper. It lives in separate burrows, consisting of tunnels 6-8 cm in diameter, nesting chamber, hibernating chamber, food and storage chambers and droppings chamber. It can burrow as deep as 2 meters in winter months when it hibernates. Females usually have 2-5 litters each year. The gestation period is 20 days, and the size of the litter ranges from 3 to 12 young. 
The European hamster's diet consists of grains, seeds, plants, insects and baby young nesting birds. 
It is native to a large area extending from south-west Siberia (the Yenisey river) to Belgium and north-east France. It started spreading from its original habitat on steppes into central Europe during the extensive deforestation period, significantly earlier than marmots; its remains were found on neolithic archaeological sites dating back some 6-7 thousand years. In the Czech Republic it lives in an open landscape. Since the 1970-80s, when it has become almost extinct, especially in hills and mountains, its presence has been steadily increasing, reaching very high levels in some regions (around the Labe River, in south Moravia, etc.), although its occurrence in areas more than 500-600 meters above the sea level is rather rare.


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100 Years since Jan Kašpar's First Public Flight

Catalogue number	0687
Date of issue	1.6.2011
Face value	21 CZK
Print sheets	50 stamps
Size of picture	23 x 40 mm
Graphic designer	Pavel Sivko
Engraver Printing method	Jaroslav Tvrdoň, Bedřich Housa rotary recess print in black combined with photogravure in yellow, red, violet and greybrown

Jan Kašpar (May 20th, 1883, Pardubice - March 2nd, 1927, Pardubice) was a Czech engineer, Czech aviation pioneer, most renowned member of the first group of Czech aviation builders and pilots. His pioneering long-distance flights made him particularly famous.
A mechanical engineering graduate from the Imperial and Royal Czech Technical University in Prague, Kašpar successfully completed a one-term programme at a higher car school in Germany and took up a job with Basse&Selve in Altena, Westfalia in 1908 where his interest in aviation began. After a short employment with Laurin&Klement in Mladá Boleslav he returned back to his native Pardubice and set up an aviation building business with his cousin Evžen Čihák. Both cousins went their own separate way after some time, however, with Evžen Čihák starting an independent business together with his brother Hugo. 
Kašpar first construction was a monoplane after the Antoinette monoplane manufactured by French designer Latham. While he was still building the monoplane, he heard the news of Louis Blériot's first flight across the English Channel on July 25th, 1909. The news made him buy a Blériot XI (serial number 76) for 18 000 francs after he had found himself unable to take off his own model. The first engine he used in the Blériot was his own model, later replaced with an Anzani. Kašpar's first successful flight, covering 2 kilometres at a height of 20-25 meters, came on April 16th, 1910. He gained his first experience as a pilot during the next few months, and passed a pilot examination on June 16th, 1910. 
In 1911 Kašpar performed the first flight in his own model fitted with a 70 HP Daimler engine and intended for a first long-distance flight in the Czech territory. The first test flight at a 400-meter height lasted 24 minutes and 23 seconds. Kašpar made another flight on the same day, April 30th, 1911, this time accompanied by his cousin Evžen Čihák as passenger. 
Kašpar's highlight event, the famous Pardubice-Velká Chuchle flight (May 13th, 1911), covered 121 kilometres at about 800 meters above the ground in 92 minutes. The aircraft, donated by Kašpar to the Technical Museum of the Czech Kingdom (today's National Technical Museum in Prague) in 1913, is still on display. 
Kašpar's next famous event was the first long-distance passenger flight. The Mělník-Chuchle flight lasted 41 minutes and 55 seconds; the passenger was Jaroslav Kalva, editor of theNárodní politika daily. 
Impoverished and suffering from mental disease, Kašpar committed suicide in 1927.


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Execution of 27 Protestant Leaders (21.6.1621) on the Old Town Square

Catalogue number	0686
Date of issue	1.6.2011
Face value	26 CZK
Print sheets	4 stamps
Size of picture	50 x 40 mm
Graphic designer	Zdeněk Ziegler
Engraver Printing method	Václav Fajt recess print from flat plate in black combined with offset in red

The stamp commemorates the 390th anniversary of the execution of 27 Czech Protestant leaders on the Prague's Old Town Square. The mass execution of June 21st, 1621 became a symbolic end of the series of events that begun with the second defenestration of Prague on May 23rd, 1618, central to the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, and ended with the Protestant armies' defeat at the Battle on White Mountain near Prague, November 8th, 1620.
The execution was to become a shocking and frightening performance intended to prove to the contemporary Europe that the Habsburgs were not impressed by the leading Protestant aristocracy's revolt and that no rebellion, staged by Protestants, was able to jeopardize their authority. It led to a stronger position of the Habsburg dynasty on the Czech throne and suppression of any form of resistance on the side of a potential opposition.
A set of cobblestones, installed at the place where the scaffold (dismantled after the execution and given to the Prague's Monastery of Merciful Brothers) stood, commemorates the execution site and the sad end to the Czech Protestants' uprising.

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For Children: Zdeněk Smetana - The Little Witch

Catalogue number	0685
Date of issue	1.6.2011
Face value	10 CZK
Print sheets	30 stamps
Size of picture	30 x 23 mm
Graphic designer	Otakar Karlas, Zdeněk Smetana
Engraver Printing method	Bohumil Šneider rotary recess print in black combined with photogravure in brown, blue, red and yellow

This year's stamp of the series For Children commemorates Zdeněk Smetana, Czech animator, screenwriter and graphic designer. 
Smetana was born on July 26th, 1925 in Prague. He worked in the Bratři v triku film studio and as a director in the Krátký film Praha film studio, received more than fifty awards at both national and international film shows and festivals, including a Golden Lion, Golden Bear, British Academy Film Award, created a large number of characters and helped animate popular Czech TV bedtime stories, such as Pohádky z mechu a kapradí (featuring Křemílek and Vochomůrka),Rákosníček, Štaflík a Špagetka, Radovanovy radovánky and Malá čarodějnice (The Little Witch). He also illustrated several children's books.
Aged no more than a couple of centuries, the Little Witch is still too young for a fully qualified professional witch. Despite her poor command of magic, she's dying to see the fabulous annual witches' Sabbat soon to be held on an isolated mountain. Abraxas, her old raven, tries to dissuade her, but she won't listen! Hidden in bushes on the mountain, she finds it impossible to stand back and joins the dancing witches. The witch in chief commands the culprit to become a "good" witch in no longer than a year's time! The Little Witch understands it to mean that she is supposed to conjure the good, and not to be good in conjuring the bad, and immediately starts increasing her proficiency as a "good" witch. She conjures bundles of wood to help poor old women, helps an ill-treated horse, adds a charming smell causing euphoria to a poor flower girl's paper roses. But her good doings do not fail to leave heartburnings in a Little Witch's colleague, and when the Little Witch breaches the strict ban on Friday conjuring and helps two small children one Friday, she is punished with a heavy frost and snowstorm. She is able to turn the bad into a good magic, however, and the calamity ends in a merry carnival and snowmen building fun. By then it is time for the next annual Sabbat where the Little Witch is about to pass the qualification examination consisting of three tasks.

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Beauty of flowers - Chrysantemum

Catalogue number	0684
Date of issue	27.5.2011
Face value	2 CZK
Print sheets	100 stamps
Size of picture	19 x 23 mm
Graphic designer	Anna Khunová
Engraver Printing method	Bohumil Šneider rotary recess print in greenblack combined with photogravure in yellow, red and dark green

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Folk architecture - Z

Catalogue number	0683
Date of issue	27.5.2011
Face value	20 CZK
Print sheets	á 100 stamps
Size of picture	19 x 23 mm
Graphic designer	Jan Kavan
Engraver Printing method	Bohumil Šneider rotary recess print in black combined with photogravure in grey-green

Timber-frame houses: A couple of timbered houses from North Bohemia (front); a timber-frame house from the West Bohemian border area (back); and a small-sized Wallachian cottage.

A stamp identified with the letter Z corresponding to the price of Ordinary Item up to 20 g - non-European countries in international priority service (current price according to the Price List of Basic Postal Services: CZK 20).

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